It’s a universally accepted truth that everything tastes better when you are drunk. While some might flock to an entire stick of frozen garlic bread and others to a doner kebab smothered in garlic mayonnaise and regret, my plan of attack is most often fried chicken. There’s little to go wrong with a piece of chook garbed in a crisp, well-seasoned coating, consumed from a grease-stained paper box curbside. My penchant is hardly revolutionary – there are 8,000 chicken shops in the capital, roughly equating to one for every thousand Londoners. In fact, there are only three UK postcode districts without a chicken shop, all of which are located on remote Scottish islands. Poor souls.
As it’s the foodism drinks issue, it seems fitting to bestow my favourite fried chicken recipe that you too can enjoy with several lagers. It’s loosely inspired by chicken karaage, a boneless Japanese style of fried chicken that uses potato starch as a coating and is so unbelievably moreish you’ll find yourself eating it like a bowl of popcorn. It’s typically served in izakayas – the Japanese take on a pub where people pile in after work for cold beers and bite-sized snacks.
What makes this chicken so delicious is the overnight marinade and double fry, but most of all, the makrut lime salt that coats each piece. I adore the flavour of lime leaves; their fragrance is irreplaceable and can’t be emulated with any other herb. My love affair with these leaves has existed since early childhood, rather unromantically sparked by years reared on ready meals – specifically the Waitrose Thai red curry, which was infused with a healthy dose of makrut might.
Lime leaves aren’t always sold in supermarkets, so I’ve developed an obsession with stockpiling them whenever I come across them, in a kind of hysterical Covid toilet-roll-hoarding fashion. The fixation became so intense last Christmas that I tucked two packets into my hand luggage in case I needed them on a family holiday to the south of France. Unsurprisingly, among the foie gras, cassoulet, oysters and Toulouse sausage, these leaves did not come in handy.
